Re: Smartcards are coming to the US

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 10:06 PM 4/21/96, Lucky Green wrote:
>At 15:15 4/21/96, Brad Dolan wrote:
>>Saw a CNN story Friday about an interesting special debit card
>>application in Mexico.  They're being issued to poor Mexicans, who can
>>use them to buy tortillas and a few other foodstuffs.  The cards are tied to
>>a behavior-control database and failure to send kids to school, get
>>mandatory medical exams/treatments/vaccinations, etc. results in card
>>deactivation.
>
>My first response was: he is making this up. But it shoudn't come as a
>surprise to any reader of this list. Expect to see more of it.

Why should this surprise you? In the U.S. there are _already_ several
programs which are similar to this Mexican example.

For example, "food stamps." Not valid for expenditures on alchohol,
tobacco, and various other disapproved-of consumables. One hand takes away
the tax monies (albeit not from those getting food stamps, as their income
is typically exempt from taxation) and the other hand doles out a special
form of scrip that can theoretically only be spent on approved-of
substances.

Someday--maybe when Perry is out of the country at an IETF meeting--I'll
forward my article about the scandalous plan to privatize the nation's food
stores, thus making food only available to the rich and denying the poor of
their access to the foodstuffs deemed nutricious by the Parent-Grocer
Associations (PGAs) and available at their local People's Public Food
Distribution Centers.

(This was a piece I did in the late 1980s, critiquing the critics of
schools vouchers and private schools by imagining a world in which food
distribution was done at "public stores" and run much the way our public
education is run.)

--Tim May

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